Scientists Manage Interspecies Birthing

Kinthelt writes "For the first time, an animal of one species gave birth to another species. Not only that, but they also used a frozen embryo. " The species was an American short-haired cat birthing an African wildcat. Similar size and weight ranges which helped the birth go successfully. I've heard that this is the method they are considering using for mammoth birthing - using an African or Indian female elephant to implant a woolly mammoth embryo. It's going to be a lot harder to create that embryo though, unlike the wildcat which was created naturally.

Comments

Re:Darwinism

[Bluedove]

If anything dies off, then perhaps because they were weak and could not survive in todays harsh world. Is it worthwhile to bring them back to life, and would they be able to survive on their own? Or would we have to contain them at zoos and spend a lot of money to keep them going? Is it worth the effort?

Fully 99% of all the species that have ever existed on earth are extinct. Natural selection is not some kind of judge deciding what has more worth to live than others, it is a random walk through environment-space. In nature, species go extinct because they're not suited to the changing environment (like North America joining up with South America, and all the North American mammals sucessfully competing for food with the now-extinct South American marsupials). It is not a question of being "weak". It is dumb luck (like the case above) that changes the environment, and hence changes the total set of species existing in that environment. We are now at the point where the environment isn't changing us, we are changing the environment in a non-geological time scale. I think it is noble to pursue science that will enable us to save a species from a currently changing environment (possibly caused by us) sometime in the future.

Regardless of all this sentimentality, all the bother about Mammoths and the ilk is "hot press" - interesting stories that get the public's attention (and funding dollars). The science behind all the fanfare is certainly worth pursuing. It will teach us much about the environment around us, and a hell of a lot about ourselves. It has applications across the board, even including space travel. When the public hears about "lets ressurect a mammoth" or "housecat gives birth to wildcat", some people get all up in arms about "why are we spending money on this?" The real point of these aren't the mammoths or the wildcats, its the science advancing that is allowing us to do this. Other people will think "Maybe now I will be able to have a child, too!", some will think "we can use this to transport animal species to other worlds at lower costs", and still others will think "I should write another sequel to Jurassic Park".

Sit back a moment, get past the "mammoths in zoos" hype, and think about all the things this advancement could mean.

In the end, it is contributing to our technological capabilities. Who knows, maybe after all is said and done, perhaps a species we'll wind up saving will be our own.

And in today's news...

[Tau Zero]

Mexico City (UPI)

Biologists working in unregulated laboratories south of the border have long been experimenting with techniques and materials forbidden in the United States for ethical or political reasons. Fetal-cell transplants for treatment of Parkinson's disease has been impossible to obtain in the US, but is commonly practiced here. Now forbidden science threatens to overshadow forbidden medicine.

At a press conference in Mexico City, Dr. Xavier Cojones announced a breakthrough in cross-species gestation. "Other scientists have managed to bring the offspring of one species to term in the womb of another, but my team has successfully fertilized a hybrid of two species and gestated it inside a third. As these species never mate naturally, this is truly unprecedented."

According to the press release, Cojones and his team have crossed the Common Geek (Bitfiddleus Obsessivus) with a Trial Lawyer (Ambulancus Chaserium) and gestated the resulting embryo in an Education Major (Lowtestscorus Unemployablus). Despite their outward similarity no cross between any of these is known to have occurred; in nature, these species badmouth, snub, or sue each other to death nearly every time they meet.

The key breakthrough was in the collection and handling of the gametes and embryo. Cojones and his team claim to have achieved heretofore-unseen success in gestation of such crosses. "Our big advance was in thinking to try using an Education Major as the host-mother. The current conditions for their species are very grim, and evolution has primed their systems to be very receptive to any chance to be involved with juveniles," Cojones said. "Given the proper opportunity, embryos take very well and thrive."

Asked about the gamete donors, Cojones explained "The key is to find good specimens of each species in their natural habitat and at the peak of their natural cycle. While it is often difficult to tell when a Geek is fertile, we found that it was not at all difficult to obtain sperm from them. Under the influence of a Quake and Corona hangover, many of them will leave perfectly good samples the next morning. Linux Installfests are particular good hunting grounds for this sort of thing. Getting ova from the Lawyer was done by offering the chance to be a plaintiff in a class-action suit against private adoption agencies. This urge of lawyers to eat their own does have its scientific uses."

The last question of the press conference was about future challenges for the team. Cojones replied, "We are going to revisit some of our failures and see if we can't learn something from them. For two years we attempted to cross a Geek with a rat, without success. We finally had to turn to lawyers for ova, because there are some things even a rat won't do."

Copyright (c) 1999 United Perversion International. All rights reversed.
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